‘Most of us eventually get gagged by the industry’: Restrained activist exposes fracking business

With fracking becoming more popular in the US as an ‘alternative’ energy source, an increasing number of people are raising concerns about ecological and health risks. RT spoke to an activist who was ordered by a court to stay away from fracking sites.

Director of anti-fracking group ‘Citizens for Clean
Water’, Vera Scroggins, an outspoken critic of fracking,
last week was legally barred last week from visiting a grand
total of 312.5 square miles of land in Pennsylvania. A court
order issued by a local judge forbids her from entering any
properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the
Pennsylvania, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.
RT:You have been barred from several areas
of Pennsylvania for your anti-fracking protests against Cabot Oil
& Gas. Have you broken any laws?
Vera Scroggins: Nothing that they have proven, nothing
that they have charged me with. They have just obtained an
injunction which is a restraining order to keep me away from
Cabot Oil & Gas, their leased properties and their own
properties, not only in my county – because it did not specify it
in my court order that it was just in my county of Susquehanna in
Pennsylvania – it can be anywhere Cabot is. So it is really
broader.
RT:What are they afraid that you are going
to do?VS: Well, they claimed when they spoke to the
judge, that they were afraid for the safety of their workers and
that they were concerned about the distraction of their workers
by my presence and my camera, and also bringing other people on
tours – to show what is happening – and to let the people what an
industrialization of a community is like.

RT:If you really stand back from this
though, these guys are doing their job at the end of the day, are
you a distraction do you think, if you stood back from it as
well?
VS: Well I do not think that I am a distraction. I might
be for some. I might also be an interesting distraction. Because
when I've been going to some of these sights in the early years –
and I've been doing this for five year – when I've been going to
the sites, around the entrance some would say “Visitors
report to the site manager.”

So I would go and drive up a little road and look for the site
manager, and he was pointed at to me: “That is the
trailer.” And I would go there and knock on the door, and
they would be fine and happy to see me, and they would spend time
with me.

I said: “I’m here to learn what is happening, what is going
on here? I live here, I’m seeing all this massive
industrialization, these large rigs, a whole community here on
several acres, five acres or more. And it is like a city, an
industrial city, with trailers, equipment and lots of noise, and
smoke and smells and tucks, so can you tell me more about
it?” And they would.
RT:Is this really the way you have been
going about it, maybe you overstepped the marker by being a bit
too aggressive, because Cabot has spent a lot of money getting
you off their back, so they must be worried about you?
VS: Well, they are not worried about me, they are
worried about their pocketbook. They are worried about their
profits and image, because I’m exposing them and letting the
world know, that Cabot is continuing to have violations by the
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and they are up to
now 520 violations since 2008 in just our county alone in
Pennsylvania.

And I expose them, I call every regulatory agency I can think of:
The DEP, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), also for the workers. I
called OSHA several times this year. Finally they came out and
they violated Halliburton and Baker Hughes which are fracking
companies that work for Cabot and they showed how the workers are
overexposed to respirable silica dust. Even though they claim
they take several types of precautions and they supposedly
protect their workers. The workers are not. They were exposed to
six times the level that is allowed by law in our country.
And now they have fines and they have a whole violation written
up about them. So they don’t want me to see them, they don’t want
me to talk about them, because I’m willing to talk, to expose,
and call anybody I have too to let the world know what is
happening to us.

RT:So this isn’t a setback for you
now?VS: Well it is not actually much of a setback,
because they are saying that I can’t go unto any of the
properties that I leased, I can stay just on the road. So I will
do everything I can from the road. I have a new camera with a
more powerful zoom lens, and I will bring in the images. And I
still bring the tours in, and the legislators from New York and
from around the world. People from all over the world come here
besides from New York and other states. We want to see what Cabot
will not show them on a tour.
RT:Well I guess the focus there now, it has given
you more PR more exposure, hasn’t it? Pennsylvania, along with
Texas, has turned into something of a fracking haven for
companies. What damage has actually been done in your state,
Pennsylvania?VS: Well what has been done – to my county, to
my neighborhood, to people I know – is that their water has been
contaminated and their air has been contaminated, and we are in
danger of our health and our safety from various aspects of the
industry.
And I’ve met these people, and I’ve talked to them and I’ve
interviewed them and I’ve videotaped them, and then I bring media
to see and meet them - especially those who can still talk
because, as time goes by, most them are eventually are sealed
shut by the nondisclosures and gagging orders by the industry.
The industry does not want freedom of speech here; that is why
they are trying to silence me. They are trying to keep me away
and discredit me and not allow them to get exposed.
RT:You went as far as to take Yoko Ono as
well as Susan Sarandon on tours of fracking sites. What can they
say about it?

VS: They were shocked like everybody is. Whoever
comes on my tours is shocked. They cannot believe that they are
doing this in neighborhoods next to homes within 300 feet, next
to schools, on school properties. All of the school districts, we
have five of them in my county are leased. Three of them are
leased to Cabot.
We have drill wells on one school district, high pressure gas
pipelines. And not only high pressure gas pipelines, it’s all
over our county, they have been putting in new ones all the way
up to 30 inches or more.

RT:Proponents of fracking say that if it's
done right, and if you follow all the regulations, it inflicts
only limited damage. Is there any truth in this, in your opinion?
If it is done properly?VS: There is no properly because the process
itself is flawed. You cannot pour millions of gallons of liquid
laced with sand and with chemicals under super high pressures
down all these drilled holes without having consequences. And the
consequences are now rippling through our county, throughout our
state and throughout the US where 34 states are being drilled.
You cannot do these things without consequences and they are dire
consequences and as time goes on, more of it is revealed.
RT:Oil companies say fracking has brought
down fuel prices in the US but I wonder of your biggest struggle
is trying to convince those consumers that are far away from you,
far away from the shale sides. Are they really concerned about
what is happening to the environment what is not in their back
garden?

VS: Well they are getting more concerned because
this whole fracking madness is spreading all over the planet.
They want to frack as many countries as possible, and so more
people are becomming aware of it. And I’m getting people here
from all over Europe, N. America, Africa to come to see for
themselves besides what they hear from the gas companies. Because
the gas company will admit to no problems: “Everything is
hunky-dory, everything is covered, all the bases are covered, we
have nothing to worry about folks. We know what we are doing.”
That is why Cabot has 520 violations by the DEP and millions in
fines. They know – supposedly– what they are doing.
RT:What would you say to UK citizens where plans
are also underway to frack?VS: I would say, please don’t do it. Don’t allow
them in. Once they are in its harder to get rid of them. And tell
your legislators, just like some legislators have come here from
the UK and lots of media, come and see for yourself, come and see
what they are doing next to our homes, our schools, our farms,
and exposing even our food production and our animals to all the
toxic emissions by the dozens of compressor stations.
We have about 48 compressor stations right now in our county
alone, which spew out tons of toxic emissions every day besides
the noise. You have noise pollution, light pollution, traffic
pollution.
If you want this in your neighborhood for a limited form of
energy… Even now the five-year-old wells that we have, are down
to about a quarter or an eight of the production they had five
years ago.
If you want to sacrifice your lives, our environment, our health
and the future generation’s health and safety for limited form of
energy, then please think again. Remember we need to go for
renewables that are non-polluting that are unlimited in the
source.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.